


Liar

by orphan_account



Category: Death Note, Death Note & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 04:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9219188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Light is a liar. L should have known.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know. Light isn’t good and L isn’t good either, but let’s put that aside, shall we? Apparently, there’s a section in Death Note when Light loses his memory for giving up the Death Note? L falls for it. L dies. But, I like L. I like Light, too. So here, in this little page of mine, I’m going to rewrite it. I took a lot of the dialogue from the anime itself.  
> Where L doesn’t die and Light doesn’t tell the truth.

**Liar**

**Warning(s):** Fluff. Angst (my specialty).

 **Disclaimer:** As you all know, I do not own Death Note. (As you also maybe know, I have neither read it nor watched it.)

 

Droplets of rain cascaded down the back of his neck, racing down his spine and dissolving into wet spots on his shirt. He could feel the cold fingertips as water penetrates his thick black roots onto his scalp. But the rain was secondary as he stood across a humble gravestone carved with neat letters.

His shoulders were slouched, as they usually were, and all he could hear was the deafening beat of precipitation plummeting to the soggy ground. All he could see was a somber headstone and overcast skies, and if he was sobbing, he couldn’t tell because his face was drenched anyway.

If he was screaming, he couldn’t know because all he could hear were dull church bells ringing in the distance, echoing through a field of corpses that Light had no place in.

L felt the familiar heating of skin as anger boiled beneath the surface, immediately followed by the contraction of his throat and the dipping of his stomach that no amount of pastries could fill.

* * *

The shift was chilling. Whether it was a case of self-hypnosis or whatnot, it was a behavior L had never seen before. Everything was proceeding, albeit slowly, and the seventh day of confinement had come. Though no sunlight penetrated the darkness of the room, the digital clock’s red numbers dematerialized and materialized as the seconds drew on. The afternoon arrived, and along with it a cup of Earl Grey, milk, and dozens of sugar cubes as Quillsh rolled in a stainless steel serving cart.

He had thanked him, mindful to call him “Watari” though no one was in the room with them. The elder watched the screen silently for a few moments, pondering one thing or another to himself, and departed as quietly as he arrived, save for the rhythmic bumps as the wheels of the cart bounced between each tile.

Then Matsuda’s clacking footsteps echoed through the hall, and mere seconds later, he was bursting into the room.

Silence, and then, “The room is so dark!” he exclaimed, going over to the drawn curtains. “You won’t mind if I let some light in, do you?”

Aizawa entered the room whilst L replied with a sigh, “No, that’s fine, Mr. Matsuda.” The door closed and the quiet skid of metal against metal filled the room as the curtains were pulled open. A single thick ray of sunlight entered the room, though it only brightened one corner. Matsuda seemed content with it.

“Have there been any changes?” Aizawa asked, standing behind L with his arms crossed over his chest.

L switched the screens from the blonde singer to Light and back again. And then back to Light. And then very briefly to Mr. Yagami, who seemed so very exhausted that L almost felt bad. And then back to Light. The three microphones across him lay untouched, until a pale hand picked one up and dry lips pressed against the windscreen.

“Light, it’s only been one week, but you’re looking worn out,” there was a pause as he rifled through his mind for a proper opening question. ‘Are you Kira’ seemed unlikely to yield any answers but the customary ‘I’m not Kira’, and he was in no particular mood to play that game at the moment. “Are you alright?”

Then there was a pause on Light’s side, who did not seem to hear it at first, until his chin tilted up ever so slightly. His eyes were hidden beneath long brown bangs and his lips were barely visible from the camera. “Yeah…I know I probably look pretty bad in here, but this useless pride…I’ll just have to get rid of it.”

And then Light, who had somehow looked prideful despite his curled position on the ground before, was suddenly not as he had been before. He looked pitiful and _confused_ , as his neck craned from side to side. It was as if he was taking in his surroundings. As if he had never seen it before.

L leaned forward, closer to the dull luminescent screens.

Light was moving more than he had been for the past week, though it could only be told from the movement of his neck, and he was speaking. He had eye contact with the camera: the second time after he had first entered the cell. He said, “Ryuzaki, I know I agreed to be detained and chose to do this, but now I clearly realize that doing this is meaningless!

“I’m not Kira! Hurry up and get me out!”

“I can’t do that,” he replied. “We promised that, no matter what you said, I wouldn’t let you out until we decided on whether or not you were Kira.”

* * *

He wished he had. Maybe then they could have spent more time together.

Or maybe he should have kept him confined longer. Maybe he should have confined him _forever_ , just to keep the case open for as long as he lived. Then there wouldn’t be a gravestone marked with Light’s name and L wouldn’t be there, pressing his fingertips into it and gripping it until his knuckled turned white. Light would still be alive and, if he were, maybe they would be having a conversation about philosophy or religion. It would end up more like an argument, as they rarely agreed with each other, but that would be good enough. Maybe they would be out having lunch, even if L hated the outdoors. Maybe they would be in bed, spending a lazy day together, the clacking sound of keyboards filling the room. L would be drinking tea and Light would crinkle his nose in the certain way that made his heart skip a beat and his fingers twitch from an urge to touch.

Light would say, “You put too much sugar in.” His honey-tinted eyes would silently count as L dropped cube after cube of sugar.

And he would reply, “Preference. Do you want some?” L would slurp, just to see the latter pinch his eyebrows together and roll his eyes. It would be fond and lovely. Maybe the corner of the boy’s pink lips would curl up as he hid it behind a veneer of frustration.

“You’re going to die sooner.”

“Light cares about my wellbeing?”

And then they would curl closer together, sharing their body heat and breathing each other’s scents. L would pepper chaste kisses all over Light’s face just to hear his tinkering laughter, and when that soft hand came and landed on his face to stop him, he would kiss that, too. He’d kiss every digit and treasure every moment. He’d memorize the blush on the boy’s cheeks that was predictable, but still so beautiful.

L closed his eyes and ran his fingers across the marble as he brought up images of Light in his mind. He was afraid to forget, afraid to let go. He refused to.

* * *

L was already awake when Light cracked open his eyes. He fought the urge to kiss those fluttering eyelids as they blinked the sleep away and opted to pretend not to notice. He continued typing, searching through file after file of evidence to find more evidence. He read reports about the Yotsuba Group: all members were under suspicion.

He felt a light brush of skin against his hip and looked down to see Light nipping at the flesh beneath his white shirt.

“You’re in a good mood this morning,” he had commented, mesmerized by the way the boy’s brown hair caught the sunlight and glowed like a halo. He stared at his long golden eyelashes and the smooth skin that looked radiant from reflecting the beams of light.

“I had a dream,” Light began, his voice huskier and slightly slurred. “You were there. And so was Watari and my family. You were all there.”

“Where were we?”

“Paradise, maybe,” Light pressed his lips against L’s bony hip again. “What this world ought to be, maybe. It looked exactly the same—no, maybe it _was_ exactly the same. But I knew, somehow, that it was paradise.”

“What about you? Were you there with us?”

 

“Hey, Light. Were you in that dream you dreamt?”

 

They were in the front seat of a helicopter with tinted windows and bulletproof metal, landed before a large warehouse. The headlight of the vehicle was beaming at one of the corrugated metal walls, creating a white halo on nothing. Or so L thought.

L wiggled his bare toes against the seat, leaning forward and squinting his eyes so as to get even an inkling of understanding. But he could not: there was no object, no person, that stood across the team’s gunpoint. There was only cold luminescence and rusting metal, but the others were screaming anyway, tinny shrieks in the headphones he wore, and the sound was reverberating within the confines of his skull. He spoke into the small microphone across his lips while Light, who sat beside him, seemed torn between unbuckling his belt to leave and staying inside.

“Please bring that notebook to the helicopter,” he said. Light settled back into his seat, a constant warmth at L’s side. Unconsciously, he sidled towards it.

He shouldn’t have let Light take the notebook from him.

* * *

There were so many things he shouldn’t have done. Before, L had never understood regret as profoundly as he was now, with his cold fingertips tingling as he slowly lost feeling in them. He quickly took them off the headstone and to his teeth. He bit into the flesh, but couldn’t feel. There was a brief flash of panic as he wondered, ‘What if I never feel Light again?’ Which was a ridiculous thought to begin with because Light was not there with him. Light was not warm. Light was not alive.

But, L would be happy even if Light wasn’t warm, as long as he was beside him again. Even if they were exchanging blows and jagged words, he wanted to feel the power of youth and of life that was thrumming in the boy’s veins.

A copper tang greeted his tongue and L swept it up with a single motion of his tongue. He still couldn’t feel anything, though he could see the torn skin and the indolent movement of his oozing blood. Rain continued to cascade down his face, down the bridge of his nose and sharp cut of his jaw. His wet hair clung to his forehead and nape, and new rivers spilled down his body.

He didn’t know when he closed his eyes, but he kept them closed once he realized it. He let his mind drift off with the sound of the thundering deluge amongst church bells that never seemed to stop resonating.

L collapsed into a boneless heap against the gravestone and his knees created indents in the sodden soil. The flowers he had brought, a gorgeous bouquet wrapped in bright plastics and paper, crinkled beneath his weight. The paper was destroyed and the blossoms were brown and dirty. If Light were here, he would have lifted L up by the pits of his arms and shouted, “Get it together, for God’s sake!”

But he wasn’t, and L didn’t stop screaming until he realized his throat was sore and his chest was heaving.

* * *

There it was again, that shift in character. Light was different: he wasn’t the one L had spent months waking up beside and whispering morning greetings. He wasn’t the one that scolded him, albeit fondly, for eating cake at two or three o’clock when they were supposed to be in bed. He wasn’t the one he had kissed and shared a bed with. This Light was different, with a new brand of dread and horror branded onto his facial expression. This Light was tragic.

But he refused to believe it. When Light flinched away from his raised hand that had inched upwards to cup his jaw, when he subtly moved away from L’s side that grew cold without him, L refused it. He asked, for there was nothing else to do and no muscles he had control over, “Are you alright?”

And Light kept looking at him with this heartbreaking expression that L had never seen before. The honey of his eyes were no longer bright, but dull, and the pink lips that used to pull into an affectionate smile were pursed and pale. Then the boy’s hand shot out from the side, the other clutching the notebook to his chest, and grasped L’s own as if it were a lifeline. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m alright.”

But he didn’t look ‘alright’, and L would know because he _knew_ what ‘alright’ looked like. Whether it was in the form of blushed cheeks and panting breaths or sharp retorts and underlying frustration, L had grown accustomed to picking out these moments. But L refused it anyway.

He quirked his lips up, an odd amalgam of worry and relief brewing in the pit of his stomach, and watched as Light kissed his hand.

“You’re acting strange,” L blurted as Light turned away. After touching the notebook, after that awful scream tore from Light’s esophagus, something irreversible had happened. A wall had been built and every touch seemed to be the last.

Silence, and then, “Yeah, I am, aren’t I.” Light took his hand again and squeezed it, linking and unlinking their fingers as if to memorize the weaving motion. “I guess I’m a bit melancholy because it’s over now.”

“There’s a second Death Note,” L reminded him, clutching the hand that was in his possession. He sidled closer to Light again, as if his body was enough to shatter the invisible barrier between them. “We have to find—“

“It’s over.”

 

“Did you ever tell me if you were with me in that dream of yours?”

 

It was raining, bells were tolling, and L was feeling oddly melancholy outside in the rain. Alone. Standing at the edge of a tall building beside a satellite and vents. The sky was dull and dreary, and the rain felt more like hail as it pelted against his skin. The wind was so strong that it blew water droplets into his eyes, but he stayed there anyway.

When he felt a gaze fixed upon the side of his head, he tilted his chin and saw Light, who was nice and dry beneath the overhang. He said something, but it couldn’t be heard over the roaring winds, so he cupped his hand to his ear. Light cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted, but L couldn’t hear it: the bells were too loud.

Then Light was fighting the winds to come to him, one hand shielding his eyes from the torrent. He asked, “What are you doing?”

L replied, staring out over the dreariness, “Oh, I’m not doing anything in particular, it’s just…I hear the bell.”

There was quiet for a moment, save for the deluge. The boy looked at him, a combination of something he didn’t understand. Sorrow? Regret? Fascination? Desperation? “I don’t hear anything.”

“Really? It’s been running non-stop all day. I find it very distracting. I wonder if it’s a church…maybe a wedding…perhaps a—“

“What are you talking about?” Light looked distressed, his brown hair drenched and his thin white dress shirt clinging to the skin beneath it. The shirt offered no protection and Light’s face was terribly rigid as rivers surged down his cheeks like tears. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

Something was wrong—so wrong, in fact, that L could no longer refuse it. “I’m sorry. None of what I’m saying is making any sense to you. If I were you, I wouldn’t believe any of it.”

Something was wrong. Light looked at him, mouth half-open as if he were on the precipice of speaking, but everything was wrong. The boy merely closed his mouth and L felt those honey eyes drink in his form, as if he would never see it again. As if it were like a last meal, amongst the bells. “Let’s go back inside.”

But something was wrong and L’s nature demanded he push. “Tell me, Light. From the moment you were born, was there ever a point when you actually told the truth?”

Light looked at him, took a step closer as if he wanted to embrace him, but stopped short. “Everyone lies,” he said. His eyes were so shuttered and dark.

Everything Light said was curt nowadays. As if he was afraid of speaking more than a certain amount of words. None of his previous verbosity appeared.

“I had a feeling you’d say that.”

 

“Tell me. Were we together?”

 

They were drying off with small towels: L, who wasn’t really drying himself, and Light, who was seated on the steps, dutifully wiping off the droplets. L trudged over, watching as Light ran the towel through his hair one, two, three times. He watched the diaphanous material of the boy’s white dress shirt and the equally thin T-shirt beneath it.

“Well, that was certainly an unpleasant outing,” he said, his voice resonating through the hall.

Light huffed a laugh, “That’s your own fault. What did you expect?” And then, after looking at L’s untouched towel draped over his dark hair, beckoned him over with upturned lips. “Come here. Let me dry you.”

And L could almost believe that things were back to normal, with the pale light that reflected off the clouds beaming in through the window and Light drying his hair like he had been doing for the past months. He was sitting on the step below Light’s own and closed his eyes, allowing his mind to fall into rhythm with the soft way the boy caressed his head. The youth’s long legs were comfortable armrests that enveloped him with a sense of security. He felt like he was sitting on a throne.

“Sorry,” he said, as he craned his neck back and brought his pale hand to the back of Light’s neck. He wished he hadn’t, the moment he saw Light’s expression dull, but wondered if it was a figment of imagination as it brightened again with a grin. The latter leaned down, allowing L to run his fingers down his bony spine, and pecked a kiss on his lips.

Soon, they were kissing as if it was there last. Desperation took ahold of L’s spirit and he clutched at Light’s shoulders to tug him closer. Their mouths slot together and suckled on each other’s lips. L could feel the boy’s fluttering pulse as he cupped his jaw, his neck, and breathed his scent. Light’s soft warm exhales brushed against his skin.

When they broke apart, they were both panting and slightly flushed. L, whose eyes ran down the length of the latter’s legs, positioned himself at the youth’s wet feet. He ran a towel over them reverently.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought I might help you out. I can give you a massage as well—it’s the least I can do to atone for my sins. I’m actually pretty good at this.”

Light sighed and L slowly ran his thumbs across the pads of the boy’s feet. He rolled it between his hands, checking the ankles were comfortable and loose. He continued like that until his concentration was stolen by the feeling of a golden gaze boring into his head. A sudden heartache fought its way up to his throat; so abrupt, in fact, he almost thought it was an oncoming heart attack. The foot draped over his lap, the long legs they were attached to…the person it belonged to. Gone.

“It’ll be lonely, won’t it,” and he didn’t dare look up, though he felt the foot stiffening in his hands. “You and I will be parting ways soon.”

Silence. L looked up and Light looked down, covering his eyes with his bangs. His shoulders looked so narrow. The moment was shattered at the ringing of L’s cellphone, and when he closed the screen with snap, he beckoned Light to stand.

“Come on, Light. It seems like everything’s worked out—“

“Wait,” the boy interrupted, his voice wavering so terribly he had to pause for a moment. “Wait.”

“What is it?”

“Come here,” and Light held his arms open like a child wanting to be carried. His eyes took on a color of hopelessness that L didn’t understand. It was miserable. It felt like a good-bye. “Hold me, please.”

L complied, though he didn’t understand why. He kneeled down slowly, straddling Light and pressing the boy’s face to his stomach. He burrowed his face into brown hair and cradled everything close to his heart; in turn, arms enveloped him, wrapping tightly around his frame, and blunt fingers clawed at his shirt.

“Hold still,” Light’s voice was slightly muffled by the cloth of L’s shirt, “and let me stay like this a little longer.”

And then there was the echoing of a clattering pencil bouncing down the long staircase. In L’s peripheral vision, a small scrap of paper floated down to the ground beside him as Light’s hand lost control.

“You—“

 

“What about you? Were you there with us?”

“Yeah.”

* * *

Liar.


End file.
